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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Latest News
Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
Fabrice Bentivoglio, Nicolas Tauveron
Nuclear Technology | Volume 164 | Number 1 | October 2008 | Pages 55-75
Technical Paper | Icapp '06 | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A4008
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the framework of Generation IV, the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique studies different concepts of gas-cooled reactors (GCRs). The estimation of thermal-hydraulic performances in steady-state and in transient operations is of high importance for the designer of such systems. These evaluations require efficient and reliable simulation tools capable of modeling the whole reactor, including the core, the core vessel, the piping, the heat exchangers, and the turbomachinery. CATHARE2 is a thermal-hydraulic one-dimensional reference safety code developed and assessed for pressurized water reactors. It has been adapted to deal also with GCR applications. The assessment for these new applications requires cross comparisons with experimental representative data. Thus, CATHARE2 is validated against existing experimental data, in particular, the German power plant Oberhausen II data. Oberhausen II was a 50-MW(electric) direct-cycle helium turbine plant, operated by the German utility Energie Versorgung Oberhausen. This paper presents the plant, with a large emphasis on the helium power conversion unit, the modeling, and the comparison between experimental data and simulation results for both steady-state and transient cases. The agreement between the experimental data and the CATHARE results is quite satisfactory for the analyzed cases.